Jacob van Ruisdael
Dutch, 1628/29 - 1682
Painter, draughtsman, engraver (etching). Landscapes, winter landscapes, seascapes.
Jakob Ruysdael's master is not known: it has been said to be his uncle Salomon van Ruysdael, or Allardt van Everdingen, or Wynans, or Jan Cornelisz. Vroom. It has also been said that his father, a frame dealer, was a painter, and taught his son. However it seems probable that Ruysdael taught himself by studying nature and his immediate surroundings, which would explain a sometimes naive and experimental approach. He entered the Haarlem Guild in 1648 and went to Amsterdam in 1657, obtaining citizenship in 1659, but his work met with little success. During his time there he may have met Rembrandt. He visited Westphalia, Guelder and Hanover in 1650, but it seems that he never went to Norway even though he painted Scandinavian landscapes, probably after those of Allart van Everdingen who had been there. He was fascinated by the austere and tormented wilderness and perpetually dark vegetation.Ruysdeal's will indicates that he must have suffered from 'chronic melancholy' from which he may have wanted to cure himself; this is sometimes perceived as the reason why he took up medicine and was received as a doctor at the University of Caen in 1676. It seems that he returned to Haarlem in poverty in 1681 and died there in hospital.
Ruysdael's first works were etchings such as Landscape with Trees, 1646. In 1647 he painted Sandy Track in quite a thick medium, which he made more fluid from 1650. From 1657, and this change may be attributed to the possible influence of Rembrandt in Amsterdam, Ruysdael subjects his landscapes to a meticulously detailed, carefully planned composition. He is above all restrained in the means he employs; his use of colour avoids anything eye-catching or bright, and red, amongst other colours, is banished. Only occasionally do figures - added at the request of purchasers and often painted by other artists - break the perfect unity of the work. Hobbema may have been one of his pupils at the end of his career. His paintings were also embellished with figures by van Ostade, V. Berchem, Philippe Wouverman, Br. D'Helst, J. Vecton, and J. Vonck.
Deeply attached to his native country, Ruysdael did not paint landscapes in the Italian style like those of Jean Both and others; the light effects which often appear in his paintings are characteristic of the Zuider Zee. He also painted a large number of dramatic seascapes: the Louvre has one in which the colour of the water turns yellow with the approach of a storm, depicting apprehension at the prospect of the storm rather than the storm itself. At a time when so many painters emphasised the picturesque aspect of the countryside, Ruysdael was pursuing the elusive spirit of nature itself. Each element of the landscape was included more for its symbolic value than for its actual appearance. A constant reminder of the inevitability of death is also present in his Vanitas still-lifes as the changing appearances of things in light and darkness. In the years 1660-1670, Ruysdael painted two versions of the Jewish Cemetery. In these works he created a realistic vision of the ruined tombs in the Jewish cemetery in Amsterdam dominated by imaginary ruins. In one of the works a storm is looming; in the other, a rainbow reconciles earth and sky.
Ruysdael's work imposes an entirely subjective point of view, and he is often perceived as the inventor of picturesque landscape, in contrast to the Classical style of Poussin and Claude Lorraine. His body of work is considerable and includes the famous Mill at Wijk, near Duurstede which even at its most peaceful is subject to an underlying anxiety. A pantheist, Ruysdael fuses the actual reality of the landscape with the divine essence of things. Johann Wolfgang Goethe saw in him a painter of "visionary landscapes". For Ruysdael landscape painting is a reflection of a state of mind.
"RUYSDAEL, Jakob Isaakszoon van or Jacob." In Benezit Dictionary of Artists. Oxford Art Online, http://www.oxfordartonline.com.proxy.lib.fsu.edu/subscriber/article/benezit/B00158357 (accessed May 8, 2012).
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